Extensible markup language (XML) and related database and query technology has gained increasing popularity as a Web-enabled platform, supporting commercial network services and solutions for a variety of applications. XML has advantages including an inherently hierarchical structure which lend themselves for example to data encapsulation via the document object model (DOM) and other formats or protocols. However, an XML representation of objects such as data stores, Web pages or others may still involve disadvantages of certain types, particularly with regard to loading or execution times for certain applications. This may be in part because searching or querying XML data often requires the traversing of hierarchical structures to descend to nodes or levels of interest, and then retrieve desired data points. In other implementations, data may be stored in a structured format (such as standard query language, SQL) but queried by way of an XML query engine to interface to XML applications. A certain amount of translation time in that case is required to mediate between the two formats.
In applications such as Web browsing or other services, for example retrieving email stores, the user may therefore perceive the time to traverse an XML data store, or to retrieve structured data via an XML translator, as a noticeable lag. Other problems and disadvantages in XML query technology exist.